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Court orders found to protect battered women

Court orders protecting battered women do prevent violence by their
partners, according to an analysis of abuse incidents reported to the
Seattle police in 1998 and 1999.Slightly more than 10% of the 2,700 reports led to a temporary (two-week)
protection order, which required the man to stay away from the victim's
home or avoid all contact with her on penalty of civil or criminal
contempt charges. About 60% of the women with a temporary order received
a permanent (one-year) protection order.

In all three groups — no order, temporary order, and permanent
order — the women were the same age and had the same history of
abuse, on average. Women who received no protection order after reporting
an incident were much more likely to have been using alcohol or drugs
at the time of the attack, as were their abusers. They were also less
likely to be married to, but more likely to be living with, the abuser.

After controlling for all these factors, women with permanent court
orders were 80% less likely to be physically or psychologically abused
than those who received no protective order. Women who received only
temporary orders were more likely to be stalked, threatened, harassed,
or verbally attacked (although not assaulted) than those with no court
orders. They might have been particularly vulnerable to harassment after
initiating legal proceedings because they were holding the man responsible
and shaming him by making his behavior public.

However, according to crime victim surveys, only about 50% of serious
abuse incidents ever find their way into police files. To obtain information
not in police records, the researchers interviewed (by mail or telephone)
women who did and did not receive a court order after reporting abuse.
More than 350 women completed three interviews. The first took place
six weeks after the reported incident, the second five months later,
and the third nine months later.

The researchers found that during the first five months neither temporary
nor permanent protective orders had a significant effect on threats and
abuse. But after nine months, women with permanent court orders were
less likely to have been contacted by the abuser and less likely to have
been threatened with a weapon, injured, or sexually abused. Women who
received only temporary protective orders did not have statistically
lower rates of abuse.